Wild Things:
Life as We Know It
Honeyeater birds, sea slugs, tree frogs, and more
- By T.A. Frail, Megan Gambino, Laura Helmuth, Abigail Tucker and Sarah Zielinski
- Smithsonian magazine, February 2009
(John Anderton)
Five species of Hawaiian birds—all now extinct—looked so much like Asian and Australian birds called honeyeaters that scientists thought they were all in the same family. The birds had curved bills to reach inside flowers and long, brushy tongues to lap up nectar. But a new genetic analysis by Smithsonian scientists of preserved Hawaiian specimens shows that the birds constituted their own family and were unrelated to true honeyeaters. The resemblance was an extreme case of "convergent evolution," in which lineages evolve strikingly similar adaptations—in this case, for feeding from flowers.
Additional Sources
"Gourds afloat: a dated phylogeny reveals an Asian origin of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae) and numerous oversea dispersal events," Hanno Schaefer et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society B, November 25, 2008
"Spectacular New Gliding Species of Ecnomiohyla (Anura: Hylidae) from Central Panama," Joseph R. Mendelson III et al., Journal of Herpetology, December 2008
"Cross-modal individual recognition in domestic horses (Equus caballus)," Leanne Proops et al., PNAS, December 15, 2008
"Convergent Evolution of Hawaiian and Australo-Pacific Honeyeaters from Distant Songbird Ancestors," Robert C. Fleischer et al., Current Biology, December 11, 2008
"Horizontal gene transfer of the algal nuclear gene psbO to the photosynthetic sea slug Elysia chlorotica," Mary E. Rumpho et al., PNAS, November 18, 2008
Comments (2)
Very Very good artical!I found it very helpful. I had to read it over and over again! It was very interesting. I printed it out and showed all my friends! They thought it was very interesting too!
Posted by christine on February 17,2009 | 05:24 PM
Please tell me if it was your publication that presented a story on gourds within the last 3-4 months. I think the title was something like_____________gourd capital of the world. Thank you
Posted by Margaret Wellman on February 13,2009 | 03:04 PM
This was very helpful to me...
Posted by Kykeshia on February 9,2009 | 01:13 PM